100/25 FTTC

I just wish that Openreach will bring out FTTC product 100/25 soon. Because they moved from 40/10 to 55/10 but what about 80/20 should be moving to 100/25 would be nice!

I doubt it will never happen!

Edited by adslmax (Fri 15-Apr-16 10:23:43)

Would be perfect for me.

Pretty sure there is a 110/15 tier, but it's only availably on FTTP

In reply to a post by EddyTheDog:

Pretty sure there is a 110/15 tier, but it's only availably on FTTP

Completely different technology. With FTTP every single line has the capability of every single speed tier offering. With VDSL, only those that are very close to the cabinet could achieve anything close to 100meg sync speed.

I am guessing the number of people that could actually get a worthwhile speed increase is very low given how close to the cab a person would need to be. Suspect BT won't do anything like this until they get G.Fast in so they can offer the higher speeds to a higher percentage of people.

There should be an option speed boost eg:

80/20 with a speed boost of 100/20 for an extra £9 a month
40/10 with a speed boost of 60/10 for an extra £5 a month

In this way Openreach will gain profits from customers of speed boost option!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

There should be an option speed boost eg:

80/20 with a speed boost of 100/20 for an extra £9 a month
40/10 with a speed boost of 60/10 for an extra £5 a month

In this way Openreach will gain profits from customers of speed boost option!

I don't think many people would take it up. 80meg is still more than plenty for most households. This is pretty much confirmed by the fact that majority FTTP customers still only go for 40/10 or 80/20 services.

Don't forget 80Meg isn't throughput speed for household. 80 Meg would get you around 75 meg in real true speed. While 40 meg give you around 38 meg.

From BT, resellers and customers point of view it could just make things even more complicated. I am unconvinced that many people would pay much more to go from 80/20 to 100/20, and BT Openreach have created the 55/10 product which isn't far off your 60/10. I don't know how many people could get a benefit from a 100/20 product but suspect it is too few for BT to muddy the waters - at some point they might replace the 80/20 with a higher product but I can't see them adding one alongside it (unless one of their resellers heavily pushes for it but I can't really see them doing so).

G.Fast would change all that and BT will want to use the higher speeds as a differentiator.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Don't forget 80Meg isn't throughput speed for household. 80 Meg would get you around 75 meg in real true speed. While 40 meg give you around 38 meg.

I'm well aware of that. It's still more than enough.

G.Fast will be a long while to wait probably not available for us all until 2020. Why wait that long? Surely 100/20 would be nice.

And with pressure for more honest speed advertising, i.e. median rather than top decile attracting people to top tiers will get harder

I went 40/10 primarily because it suits my pocket better lol

I think G.Fast will be more expensive product that will be cheaper than very expensive FTTPoD.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

G.Fast will be a long while to wait probably not available for us all until 2020. Why wait that long? Surely 100/20 would be nice.

G.Fast trials are due to end this summer, probably less than 6months away. I expect them to begin the roll out very shortly after, perhaps even before the end of this year.

How fast the roll out begins to benefit people will very much depend on how Openreach decide to do it. They may chose to install it in cabinets that will see the most improvement first, such as those in very densely populated areas before considering a FTTrN type of solution.

Time will tell. For now, I can't believe you NEED more than 80/20 on a consistent basis.

Fair point as I think 75/19 is more than enough in every days use of households such as skygo extra, netflix hd, sky set box downloading in HD, you tube, streaming video etc.

And if BT do release FTTPoDv2 at the same time then people who really want higher speeds may get an option (depending on price models).

In reply to a post by ian72:

And if BT do release FTTPoDv2 at the same time then people who really want higher speeds may get an option (depending on price models).

Yeah, I don't think it'll be too long before they offer it again (perhaps 12-18 months) and hopefully, with the "new" connectorisation method, the time and cost won't be as eye watering. Still, I expect it to appeal to businesses more than residential but there certainly are enough speed demons who will pay for it

In reply to a post by lee111s:

In reply to a post by ian72:

And if BT do release FTTPoDv2 at the same time then people who really want higher speeds may get an option (depending on price models).

Yeah, I don't think it'll be too long before they offer it again (perhaps 12-18 months) and hopefully, with the "new" connectorisation method, the time and cost won't be as eye watering. Still, I expect it to appeal to businesses more than residential but there certainly are enough speed demons who will pay for it

And those with FTTC connections that have been adversely affected by the quality of the copper E 'side pairs and the effects of crosstalk ect
Some would be quite happy to have 80/20 on a true fibre connection

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by lee111s:

In reply to a post by ian72:

And if BT do release FTTPoDv2 at the same time then people who really want higher speeds may get an option (depending on price models).

Yeah, I don't think it'll be too long before they offer it again (perhaps 12-18 months) and hopefully, with the "new" connectorisation method, the time and cost won't be as eye watering. Still, I expect it to appeal to businesses more than residential but there certainly are enough speed demons who will pay for it

And those with FTTC connections that have been adversely affected by the quality of the copper E 'side pairs and the effects of crosstalk ect
Some would be quite happy to have 80/20 on a true fibre connection

But would they be prepared to pay, let's say, £1000 for the sake of maybe 20 or 30meg? That's the real question.

I thought I had read earlier in the year that this was part of BT's Ultra HD TV offering - increasing the DL speed on the basic FTTC package now covers this (for those on a line that can support it).

EDIT: I should have read the 55/10 thread first, it gets mentioned there...

Edited by b4dger (Fri 15-Apr-16 13:54:37)

And now today press news from openreach stated: BT Openreach Trial 18Mbps FTTC Broadband Speed for Slow ADSL Lines as a new FTTC 18/2.

No doubt to target cabinets with a low take up

Or to tempt those who don't want to pay the premium monthly fee that 40/10 attracts in comparison to ADSL. It's only going to be for selected cabinets that have poor ADSL connections though. For now anyway.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

I don't think many people would take it up. 80meg is still more than plenty for most households. This is pretty much confirmed by the fact that majority FTTP customers still only go for 40/10 or 80/20 services.

The nice thing about FTTP (or, I guess g.fast, but BT could have done FTTP in a big way a long time ago) is that it would give everyone what they want, without worrying about distance from something, or where they live. It would also help businesses that need more speed or reliable connectivity but do not want or can afford a leased line. Power users can have 100Mbit or 1Gbit while their neighbours can go for some ultra cheap and nasty TalkTalk 40Mbit deal

Saying "80Mbit is plenty" all the time doesn't really say anything and it's not a good justification for BT's decisions. Especially when on FTTC, that 80Mbit is highly likely to end up a lot less, especially as crosstalk sets in and lowers things further (are we ever getting vectoring?)

There's no reason why BT couldn't at least offer a 100Mbit tier on FTTC (especially if they ever turn on vectoring) - and leave it to the market to sell. It's not as if it costs BT considerable sums of money to add a new line profile to the cabinets...

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-16 15:13:33)

Indeed - FTTP would be great. It also would have meant that we would have had a lot more people still on very slow ADSL now compared to what we do with the FTTC rollout. Even if the money had been there managing a workforce large enough to rollout FTTP to the same scale would have most likely been beyond any supplier. Plus FTTP potentially requires digging up driveways, gardens, etc which many people have issues with.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Indeed - FTTP would be great. It also would have meant that we would have had a lot more people still on very slow ADSL now compared to what we do with the FTTC rollout. Even if the money had been there managing a workforce large enough to rollout FTTP to the same scale would have most likely been beyond any supplier. Plus FTTP potentially requires digging up driveways, gardens, etc which many people have issues with.

I've never bought the "it'll be too slow to rollout" argument - not when I can look at reality and see how much FTTP BT has rolled out where I live, and where (from city centres to the literal middle of nowhere) - it's just a shame it's so inconsistent

FTTP has been a viable technology for over a decade - e.g. Verizon's FiOS started rolling out in 2005 - which would have been plenty of time to get going and have a very considerable rollout by now. It's not as if BT had to start in 2015.

Some people may have to have their drives dug up, but a lot of people won't (as they'll have existing ducting or are on overhead cabling). It's no worse than getting Virgin installed, where you will need your drive dug up in almost every case because it's always underground. It doesn't seem to have stopped people taking up their service.

Unfortunately, in this country we prefer to find excuses to justify mediocrity, even if the excuses don't stack up - and G.Fast is no panacea, as it will need fibre to be run even deeper into the network to be viable, even if not to every home. FTTC hasn't eliminated that, merely allowed for procrastination

As for being stuck on ADSL - is it really any better to be stuck on the end of a dog slow FTTC service due to line length (or be told that you can't have it as you're too far?)

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-16 15:22:59)

I do buy into the fact FTTP would have been a long and expensive rollout so I guess we won't agree on that.

And over 90% of the country should be able to get above 30Mbps now - I don't believe that would have been the case if FTTP had been done on the same timescales (saying BT could have started in 2005 is irrelevant as they didn't and definitely couldn't prove a business case to do so at that time).

Comparing to other geographies is difficult as areas have differences - we can compare to Australia who have pretty much given up on FTTP or with Hull where they have significantly lower coverage because of the FTTP route or Korea where they have excellent coverage - in the end comparisons can be made to meet many different arguments but to do a proper comparison would take significant analysis.

Cabinets that currently have a low up take

In reply to a post by ian72:

I do buy into the fact FTTP would have been a long and expensive rollout so I guess we won't agree on that.

The county I live in has something like 1/3rd of properties being able to get FTTP. This is in about 4 years. That isn't bad at all, and that's without BT even really trying. Now imagine what they could do if they were actually serious about it, rather than using it only in instances where FTTC can't be made to work, or when the coin-toss flipped in its favour

I don't doubt the cost - it would certainly be expensive - but it's clearly the superior option, and wouldn't result in the impending obsolescence of the FTTC equipment

An often missed advantage of FTTP (or I guess G.Fast can do this too) is that you can move towards shutting down the old copper networks, with the resulting cost savings from reduced maintenance/troubleshooting efforts

In reply to a post by ian72:

And over 90% of the country should be able to get above 30Mbps now - I don't believe that would have been the case if FTTP had been done on the same timescales (saying BT could have started in 2005 is irrelevant as they didn't and definitely couldn't prove a business case to do so at that time).

We have no idea if BT actually seriously considered it back then (I mean, they still thought 2Mbps ADSL was wonderful then, even when others were looking towards faster speeds and ADSL2) - but the fact is that they could. They could also have started in 2010-2011, when the FTTC started to go in.

30Mbps isn't really something to be proud of. For a lot of people, 30Mbps is going to be a near maximum, not a baseline. Any increase in that speed is a long way off, depending on if BT feels like giving them G.Fast/FTTP

In reply to a post by ian72:

Comparing to other geographies is difficult as areas have differences - we can compare to Australia who have pretty much given up on FTTP or with Hull where they have significantly lower coverage because of the FTTP route or Korea where they have excellent coverage - in the end comparisons can be made to meet many different arguments but to do a proper comparison would take significant analysis.

Well, I brought up an area of the UK where BT themselves have deployed FTTP - though the US will have similarities since it's not an ultra urbanised area like South Korea or Hull (which I certainly did not mention)

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Unfortunately, what's done is done - and some of us will be waiting for G.Fast to get what our neighbours down the road can already get today on FTTP, thanks to the technology lottery

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-16 15:53:08)

Be interested to hear which county you are in that has 1/3rd FTTP coverage as I believe the UK average is about 1% - and BT don't provide all of that.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Be interested to hear which county you are in that has 1/3rd FTTP coverage as I believe the UK average is about 1% - and BT don't provide all of that.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6989-cornish-cont...

I got my numbers slightly wrong - it was 1/4 FTTP county-wide as of 2015, but 1/3rd of Openreach FTTP nationwide and 1/3rd of certain areas of Cornwall.

Still, 1/4 of an entire county (without trying) is a commendable result for BT, especially in one as largely rural as Cornwall. It's just a shame they didn't push it further

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-16 15:59:59)

That has to be Cornwall https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?area...

I was just checking TBB stats and it dawned on me it was probably Cornwall. Cornwall were a very special case for FTTP and whilst you say it didn't seem to be a lot of effort I suspect you will find it actually was.

I know relatively little about the Cornwall project but am aware it was very different to the rest of the country.

Indeed - it dawned on me after I posted that and confirmed through your excellent stats...

Any ideas MrS why it was possible in Cornwall but not replicable to the rest of the country? I seem to remember the Cornwall project was pre-BDUK (or chosen not to go BDUK). Do you think it could have been done within reasonable funding/timescales for the rest of UK?

In reply to a post by ian72:

Indeed - it dawned on me after I posted that and confirmed through your excellent stats...

Any ideas MrS why it was possible in Cornwall but not replicable to the rest of the country? I seem to remember the Cornwall project was pre-BDUK (or chosen not to go BDUK). Do you think it could have been done within reasonable funding/timescales for the rest of UK?

Cornwall isn't BDUK (it's an EU/council led thing, without Westminster sticking its oar in), but from memory BT still had to contribute over 50% of the cash, so it's not about "wasting" someone else's money. Given that hefty chunks of the FTTP are in areas where FTTC could have worked just as "well" as any other area of the country (densely populated, not EO - though one of the "FTTC for EO lines" trials was also in Cornwall) it's clearly not all down to demographics.

If there's anything special about the Cornwall programme, then it is likely to be contractual - not technical - and something BT could easily extend or duplicate elsewhere if they so wished

Edited by deleted (Fri 15-Apr-16 16:17:15)

I understood you were moving to an area that had been FTTP enabled under BDUK, so should be all set.

Sorry if it's fallen through.

FTTC isn't going to get any quicker without vectoring. BT aren't going to spend a bunch of money on vectoring for the sake of an extra 20Mb when they're allegedly going commercial with G.fast and the odd bit of FTTP here and there in the not too distant.

Zero business case for retrofitting the ECI cabinets or the new cards in the Huawei.

In reply to a post by sor:

FTTP has been a viable technology for over a decade - e.g. Verizon's FiOS started rolling out in 2005 - which would have been plenty of time to get going and have a very considerable rollout by now. It's not as if BT had to start in 2015.

Unfortunately, in this country we prefer to find excuses to justify mediocrity, even if the excuses don't stack up - and G.Fast is no panacea, as it will need fibre to be run even deeper into the network to be viable, even if not to every home. FTTC hasn't eliminated that, merely allowed for procrastination

Verizon had a good reason for getting FTTP going - they wanted rid of the copper.

From what the public can see Openreach really, really, really like having the copper there. It's a steady earner. If they have made any attempt to negotiate its replacement with Ofcom we've not been privy.

When Verizon started with FTTP there wasn't really a viable alternative. FTTC/N was somewhat in its infancy. Not the case by the time BT belatedly joined the FTTx party, VDSL 2 gave the option to deploy speeds that were 'good enough'.

Not to mention that BT couldn't have made their FTTP rollout much more expensive per home passed or slow per home connected if they tried. Really did completely ignore the lessons learned elsewhere and decide that they knew best, something that they have only in the past months, commencing with the FoD2 trials and culminating in the trials in Haydon Wick, begun to address.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I was just checking TBB stats and it dawned on me it was probably Cornwall. Cornwall were a very special case for FTTP and whilst you say it didn't seem to be a lot of effort I suspect you will find it actually was.

I know relatively little about the Cornwall project but am aware it was very different to the rest of the country.

Cornwall is on the whole far more taxing than our cities would be, and certainly way more difficult, time consuming and expensive than any housing estate constructed with full ducting and swept-tees.

The only thing I can see that's 'special' about Cornwall's rollout is that someone else is paying a good part of the bill.

Taking Haydon Wick as an example over some of the early commercial deployment shows just how rapidly FTTP can be deployed to pre-ducted areas if using some sanity and paying attention to best practices used by smaller networks in the UK and carriers and incumbents abroad.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Indeed - it dawned on me after I posted that and confirmed through your excellent stats...

Any ideas MrS why it was possible in Cornwall but not replicable to the rest of the country? I seem to remember the Cornwall project was pre-BDUK (or chosen not to go BDUK). Do you think it could have been done within reasonable funding/timescales for the rest of UK?

Not Mr S but have spoken to altnet fibre planners to the extent of showing them the ducting plans for a part of this estate. They reckoned that, given the ducts in place, FTTP at £8 a month incremental wholesale revenue would've provided a payback within 7 years on condition it was deployed efficiently.

Ballpark £300 per premises passed, £500 per premises connected, uptake of FTTC has been around 90% so basing on that.

This assumed the copper lines would be kept in place. Removing them shortens the payback period further thanks to maintenance savings.

The co-operation between council and Openreach appeared to be higher may have helped, and while the roll-out is not delivering at the pace it used to in Cornwall, still finding pockets of live FTTP in places I did not know about.

That said am also finding native FTTP on new builds more than I used to, partially down to a change in how I find it, brought about having reached the 90% target have more time to concentrate on the oddities that crop up.

Well I can't see why you would be too bothered yourself about whether or not this is going to happen seeing that on the 4th April you told us all that you are moving to a place with FTTP next month........

SOR ( & Ian72)

FTTP was viable back in 2004 for new estates except that the regulator wouldn't let BT use fibre only as this would bar LLU and doing both was very expensive. LLU was more important to the regulator so FTTP was put on the back burner for 8 years. A different decision by the regulator would have led to most post 2005 developments having FTTP.

When Ebbsfleet was being planned as a 'new town' around 2009 ( for build from 2011 onwards) it was allowed by the regulator as a defined exception to be FTTP only. The development was very slow to build due to the recession but I believe is all fibre. Google shows it as very small and there are no speed tests on here, could be that speed is that good no-one tests it! Or it could be a post code problem due to the newness of the estate. ( This site shows no FTTP but other info for the postcodes are also inconsistent)

In reply to a post by sor:

If there's anything special about the Cornwall programme, then it is likely to be contractual - not technical - and something BT could easily extend or duplicate elsewhere if they so wished

From my perspective, the special thing about Cornwall was the timing, alongside being contractual.

At the time of the contract, BT were intending to use FTTP commercially for a similar proportion of the UK as for Cornwall. It wasn't ever intended to be different. I bet the contract states it, in some form.

The commercial rollout started with FTTC, so there was little FTTP put in place. I bet that most of Openreach's FTTP-trained staff were working in Cornwall, following the contract, but BT were free to run the commercial project in whatever order they felt like.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously, and likely not coincidentally. BT publicly backed off from their 20%+ target for FTTP. And the G.Fast research seemed to be progressing beyond almost all expectations.

5 years earlier, South Korea had targets of 100Mbps, so used fibre as the only plausible choice. BT was probably aiming at similar targets, but suddenly a viable alternative to fibre-all-the-way was turning up.

With a viable alternative, BT could re-think how they were intending to run the commercial rollout, and that thinking will have gone into planning the BDUK tenders and plans. Even South Korea is replanning its approach towards technology similar to G.Fast.

The result is that Cornwall is an anachronism of timing. Too early for G.Fast to have struck.

Believe the change was more down to getting 80Mb/s out of FTTC rather than G.fast per se.

"We don�t tend to talk about that particular target for FTTP any more as our fibre programme has evolved, so it is far less relevant today," said a spokesperson. "That�s because since that figure was provided we�ve doubled the headline speeds available on FTTC from up to 40Mbits/sec to up to 80Mbits/sec, and we�re constantly exploring new technologies that could further enhance the performance of FTTC."

In reply to a post by zom22:

Well I can't see why you would be too bothered yourself about whether or not this is going to happen seeing that on the 4th April you told us all that you are moving to a place with FTTP next month........

Not moving to Yorkshire afterall. Staying in Telford for a little while.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

From my perspective, the special thing about Cornwall was the timing, alongside being contractual.

At the time of the contract, BT were intending to use FTTP commercially for a similar proportion of the UK as for Cornwall. It wasn't ever intended to be different. I bet the contract states it, in some form.

The commercial rollout started with FTTC, so there was little FTTP put in place. I bet that most of Openreach's FTTP-trained staff were working in Cornwall, following the contract, but BT were free to run the commercial project in whatever order they felt like.

In my opinion (based on seeing what's happened, but nothing scientific) it was the other way around - the places that got it first were exclusively FTTC areas. The exchange bordering mine was one of the first three to see action, and AFAIK it is exclusively FTTC. The houses around the exchange building, which were EO, were the subject of one of BT's "trials" - trialling the installation of a copper PCP to permit FTTC.

I have relatives on this exchange at the end of a fairly long EO line. It will be interesting to see what BT intends to do for them as part of the 99% contract extension. FTTC would be an extremely bad idea, it's a small hamlet about a mile away from a larger village.

In my own village, again FTTC was first (they did my cabinet and then stopped doing anything for 18-24 months). When they came back, they put in a good chunk of FTTP with some FTTC. I know of someone who lives across the road from my exchange - he's on FTTC, but his neighbour behind him is on FTTP. Such a lottery...

My impression seems to be that they went very slowly on FTTP until they'd got the processes and procedures sorted out, before going at it at a (relatively) big way. Other than contractual requirements that forced FTTP in Cornwall (which I'm not sure on as I haven't seen the contracts), BT could have replicated this elsewhere - but chose not to

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Then two things happened almost simultaneously, and likely not coincidentally. BT publicly backed off from their 20%+ target for FTTP. And the G.Fast research seemed to be progressing beyond almost all expectations.

5 years earlier, South Korea had targets of 100Mbps, so used fibre as the only plausible choice. BT was probably aiming at similar targets, but suddenly a viable alternative to fibre-all-the-way was turning up.

With a viable alternative, BT could re-think how they were intending to run the commercial rollout, and that thinking will have gone into planning the BDUK tenders and plans. Even South Korea is replanning its approach towards technology similar to G.Fast.

The result is that Cornwall is an anachronism of timing. Too early for G.Fast to have struck.

I think that if BT had used FTTP until G.fast was ready, no one would have complaints about that. Even what BT terms "FTTRN" using VDSL would have been good, as the fibre would be in place for cheaper FoD or G.Fast or whatever the future was to bring - with excellent VDSL performance in the meantime. Instead, BT went for the one-size-fits-all FTTC which has no upgrade path short of extending the existing fibre for FTTP/G.fast and slowly obsoleting the FTTC cabs - and a stupid lottery between the FTTP haves and the FTTC have nots

In reply to a post by kitcat:

SOR ( & Ian72)

FTTP was viable back in 2004 for new estates except that the regulator wouldn't let BT use fibre only as this would bar LLU and doing both was very expensive. LLU was more important to the regulator so FTTP was put on the back burner for 8 years. A different decision by the regulator would have led to most post 2005 developments having FTTP.

When Ebbsfleet was being planned as a 'new town' around 2009 ( for build from 2011 onwards) it was allowed by the regulator as a defined exception to be FTTP only. The development was very slow to build due to the recession but I believe is all fibre. Google shows it as very small and there are no speed tests on here, could be that speed is that good no-one tests it! Or it could be a post code problem due to the newness of the estate. ( This site shows no FTTP but other info for the postcodes are also inconsistent)

It'd be interesting to know how much effort BT put into overcoming this - did they roll over and accept it, or did they make a serious stab at persuading Ofcom/Oftel to look at the bigger picture?

BT still doesn't do FTTP in all new estates as a matter of course though (even if it is alongside copper), which makes even less sense to me.

Edited by deleted (Sat 16-Apr-16 20:24:56)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Believe the change was more down to getting 80Mb/s out of FTTC rather than G.fast per se.

"We don�t tend to talk about that particular target for FTTP any more as our fibre programme has evolved, so it is far less relevant today," said a spokesperson. "That�s because since that figure was provided we�ve doubled the headline speeds available on FTTC from up to 40Mbits/sec to up to 80Mbits/sec, and we�re constantly exploring new technologies that could further enhance the performance of FTTC."

That could certainly be the case, though I'd tend to believe that BT would be well aware of, and contemplating, profile 17a at the time of embarking on FTTC.

The final part of your quote is interesting. At the time, I'd have interpreted the "constantly exploring new technologies [to enhance] FTTC" to mean vectoring, but in hindsight it could equally have applied to G.Fast.

In reply to a post by sor:

In my opinion (based on seeing what's happened, but nothing scientific) it was the other way around - the places that got it first were exclusively FTTC areas.

I presume your "it was the other way around" is a description of the rollout within Cornwall.

I wasn't trying to say anything about the order within Cornwall particularly. I'm sure FTTC-first was as valid a choice there as the rest of the country - and, at first, BT probably had few staff *anywhere* trained for the FTTP deployment.

The only thing that matters is that the idea of FTTP remained extant at the time of the contract, and irreversibly got written in. If that is what happened...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The final part of your quote is interesting. At the time, I'd have interpreted the "constantly exploring new technologies [to enhance] FTTC" to mean vectoring, but in hindsight it could equally have applied to G.Fast.

Or VDSL 2 profile 30a. G.fast was a long way from coming off the drawing board when that quote came from BT, 2012 if I remember rightly.

well never say never, to me 55 vs 40 seems a pointless new product yet it happened.

I think if the 3db snrm rollout proves successful in bringing up average speeds, a new 105-110 product might end up been released.

I still suspect political as well as regulator intervention has contributed to the lack of openreach FTTP.

We have the ofcom situation where they are completely obsessed with retail competition to the point they have let quality assurance standards hit basement levels, they have let a situation occur where end users have no relationship with openreach the infrastructure provider (which has led to ridiculous situations like paying customers been put on trials without been communicated with), and finally this obsession has led to a holding back of superior technology such as FTTP, because FTTP sort of puts LLU up **** creek.

The gov point of view will be that they know if openreach were to start enabling profitable FTTP areas such as densely populated cities, then all the rural citizens will start making noises about wanting the same to stop a "digital divide" and this then puts pressure on the government to provide subsidises aka BDUKv2 to allow a rural FTTP rollout.

So I imagine BT have been persuaded to hold onto copper for as long as possible.

And exactly why do you think that paying customers have some mysterious" Right" to be told about trials.
It is BT's network and they can do with it want they want.

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

My sad experience in business was that the only way to trial a new process/product variation was never to tell the customer - as soon as you did they said either no thanks or they wanted a price reduction to compensate for well... something.

BT are well wise to tell nowt about owt.

In reply to a post by zom22:

And exactly why do you think that paying customers have some mysterious" Right" to be told about trials.
It is BT's network and they can do with it want they want.

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

My sad experience in business was that the only way to trial a new process/product variation was never to tell the customer - as soon as you did they said either no thanks or they wanted a price reduction to compensate for well... something.

BT are well wise to tell nowt about owt.

Which I think why certainly early stage trials tend to be done by BT employees.

In reply to a post by zom22:

Have you ever heard of blind trials? - where the precise objective is not to let the person know they are on a trial.

Makes sense when you're testing drugs, less so when testing things that can easily be measured objectively (e.g. vectoring or FTTrn and the resulting change in performance) or on things that are quite intrusive or obvious to the end user (like any trials involving new cabling or CPE, or a massive new green cabinet that has appeared out of nowhere)

In reply to a post by zom22:

Anyway the most likely reaction of some being told they are going to be on some trial or experiment is "no thank you very much - go and muck around with someone else's connection"
At the other extreme we saw the Plusnet trials which when they go wrong we get those on the trial screaming that the service is cr*p with the forum response screaming back - it's a trial you idiot - you volunteered you were told it might not work so shut the F up.

Could probably be sorted by having that in huge red letters before the person agrees to be a participant. Or by installing the new connection alongside the old so that the user has the option of moving back to the tried and tested line, if it's a dud

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I still suspect political as well as regulator intervention has contributed to the lack of openreach FTTP.

We have the ofcom situation where they are completely obsessed with retail competition to the point they have let quality assurance standards hit basement levels, they have let a situation occur where end users have no relationship with openreach the infrastructure provider (which has led to ridiculous situations like paying customers been put on trials without been communicated with), and finally this obsession has led to a holding back of superior technology such as FTTP, because FTTP sort of puts LLU up **** creek.

Australia had it the right way - moving towards one universal network, run by an impartial operator (who has no retail arm) with everyone subject to the same terms. They are slowly messing it up by moving from a mostly FTTP network to a mostly FTTC one (and seem to be doing a worse job of it than BT did!) - though there are rumours that they may salvage it by moving to FTTdp w/ G.fast

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The gov point of view will be that they know if openreach were to start enabling profitable FTTP areas such as densely populated cities, then all the rural citizens will start making noises about wanting the same to stop a "digital divide" and this then puts pressure on the government to provide subsidises aka BDUKv2 to allow a rural FTTP rollout.

So I imagine BT have been persuaded to hold onto copper for as long as possible.

The sad thing of course is that the divide will always be there unless FTTP/G.fast happen in a very big way. Whether that's ADSL vs fibre, fast FTTC/ADSL vs slow FTTC/ADSL, or FTTC vs FTTP - it's still there today.

For a government that seems to find tens of billions for infrastructure projects that only affect specific areas or cities of the country, you'd think that spending the cash on a full and final solution to the digital divide, with truly national scope, would be a no brainer. It might take years, but the sooner it's started (which should have been years ago anyway), the sooner it'll finish. It's just a shame that time and money (ours and BT's) has been wasted on short term bodgery like FTTC

Edited by deleted (Sun 17-Apr-16 11:49:28)

In reply to a post by sor:

Australia had it the right way - moving towards one universal network, run by an impartial operator (who has no retail arm) with everyone subject to the same terms. They are slowly messing it up by moving from a mostly FTTP network to a mostly FTTC one (and seem to be doing a worse job of it than BT did!) - though there are rumours that they may salvage it by moving to FTTdp w/ G.fast

That seems to say they've realised they were doing it the wrong way and have belatedly switched to the Openreach method. Less successfully.

For a government that seems to find tens of billions for infrastructure projects that only affect specific areas or cities of the country, you'd think that spending the cash on a full and final solution to the digital divide, with truly national scope, would be a no brainer. It might take years, but the sooner it's started (which should have been years ago anyway), the sooner it'll finish. It's just a shame that time and money (ours and BT's) has been wasted on short term bodgery like FTTC

See above.

Bringing in FTTP in the whole UK mean more growth in jobs, FTTC mean lack of jobs, no growth in business.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

That seems to say they've realised they were doing it the wrong way and have belatedly switched to the Openreach method. Less successfully.

I think ideology played a larger part. They had a change of government, and the current lot seems determined to suggest that anything the predecessors did was awful (no different to the UK, I guess). The current government praises the UK model and is actively trying to copy us - right down to the impracticality / inability to order FTTP on demand

Their FTTP design had some flaws but nothing insurmountable. FTTC meanwhile has been a total mess - with many of the flaws that we have in the UK, magnified due to the dodginess of Telstra's copper, sparser population densities / larger houses, and a lack of open CPE testing (unlike BT's MCT). Unlike the UK, they do at least use vectoring!

The Australian equivalent of Thinkbroadband seems to wish it never happened.

Hence the rumoured "salvaging" by moving to FTTrn/FTTdp and G.fast - they can't admit that FTTP was the best and most practical solution and should have been continued, or that FTTC has been a disaster, but this option keeps some copper in the mix and it will be cheaper so the politicians can claim it's a win. I think it's slowly becoming apparent to everyone else that sorting out the flaws with FTTP would have been a superior move though

See above.

A valid point - though we could avoid that by sticking with technologies that actually are actually ready for the future (and have a good upgrade path) - now that we know how it worked in Australia!

Edited by deleted (Sun 17-Apr-16 14:08:30)

Australia may have homes and streets but demographically and geographically is very different, so porting one model wholesale from one to the other won't work.

A lot of the 'reasoning' for the change was an escalating set of costs from the civils work in the FTTP work that had already started, and even the FTTC component is proving more expensive than UK for similar issues.

As for what is going on, hard to tell due to the level of mis-information from all sides in Australia. Not helped by the way that upgrades/network changes are being forced on people.

The UK faced three main calls:

1. We want faster broadband
2. We want it to be available to as many as possible
3. This needs to be done yesterday

There was and still is a vocal lobby element calling for

1. We want Point to Point FTTH for 100% of homes and businesses

Given those requirements any roll-out that was slower than what we have now would just be seeing more criticism. The roll-out is not perfect and will mean more to done in a few years, but a lot of the groundwork for deeper fibre is there now.

I can tell you this.

If I want to run a test on any of my customers who pay my wages, they are told about it before hand and can opt out.

People pay for a commercial service, they dont pay to be put on speculative trial's.

I will admit I am surprised someone has came on here to defend this practice.

Also i checked the t&c of 3 major isp's before I made that post, not any of them declare the isp has the rights to try experimental technology on the customer's service.

Openreach inform the isp's as is their duty, but the isp's dont inform their own customers.

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 17-Apr-16 17:33:12)

my point is, that BT seem under pressure to only roll out technologies that are financially viable for rural, they cannot rollout something only to city area's becaose of the risk of upsetting rural based citizens.

It shouldn't be either FTTP for everyone or no one, but it does seem to be the case.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The final part of your quote is interesting. At the time, I'd have interpreted the "constantly exploring new technologies [to enhance] FTTC" to mean vectoring, but in hindsight it could equally have applied to G.Fast.

Or VDSL 2 profile 30a. G.fast was a long way from coming off the drawing board when that quote came from BT, 2012 if I remember rightly.

I think 30a looked less likely in 2012, certainly compared with vectoring. The existing modems weren't capable, and the SIN specified 17a, if my recollection is correct, in mid-2012.

However, while G.Fast still required all the standardisation work completing, as of 2012 the feasibility research was almost over. There was plenty still to be done, but there was perhaps enough knowledge to start making strategic calls. At least a call that only needs to put a pause in FTTP thinking, for a year or two.

This presentation gives some overview of the timescales, up to 2014.
http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/Docs/Pre...

Source:
http://www.joepeesoft.com/Public/DSL_Corner/_Index.html

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I will admit I am surprised someone has came on here to defend this practice.

I hugely agree with this.

Communications is a mission critical aspect to many people and businesses. Being put on a trial with unknown performance is highly unlikely to allow a provider to meet SLA terms.

The latest version of SIN498 (v7.1, Feb 2016) still only specifies support for 17a, no mention of 30a anywhere in it so it still look unlikely almost 4 years on.

Agreed.

If they were going to do anything now, VDSL2-oriented, I reckon it would be profile 35b. Vectoring-compatibility with 17a has some worth.

However, BT's race for G.Fast means they will want to save the spectrum above 17MHz for that, rather than enhanced VDSL2. The two probably have similar coverage distances, so they need to pick one over the other.

V

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

However, BT's race for G.Fast means they will want to save the spectrum above 17MHz for that, rather than enhanced VDSL2. The two probably have similar coverage distances, so they need to pick one over the other.

Can't see anything other than G.fast being close to adequate given Virgin's capabilities alongside what we hope will be a considerable FTTP deployment from alternative operators.

I note Eircom deploying FTTP en masse despite previously committing themselves to enhanced copper thanks to competition and hope we see the same in the UK.

How fast Openreach will go with FTTP is going to hinge on how things perform both in time saved and take-up levels in areas like Haydon Wick.

For the public the big change is that the 2 visit needed for FTTP install should be gone and for engineers it is much more like handling copper, and thinner fibre bundles for linking the FTTP components mean less duct clearing needed and no more external CSP. Once get through some other stuff on to-do list should have a short blog item with the odd photo.

In reply to a post by sor:

Australia had it the right way - moving towards one universal network, run by an impartial operator (who has no retail arm) with everyone subject to the same terms. They are slowly messing it up by moving from a mostly FTTP network to a mostly FTTC one (and seem to be doing a worse job of it than BT did!) - though there are rumours that they may salvage it by moving to FTTdp w/ G.fast

Or alternatively they realised they'd bitten off more than they could chew (ie; done it wrong) and have learnt from our experience (and are starting to do it right).

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Or alternatively they realised they'd bitten off more than they could chew (ie; done it wrong) and have learnt from our experience (and are starting to do it right).

Looks more like politics interfered to me, and the MTM plan is going to end up costing not far off as much as the original plan in the shorter term, then cost more as upgrades have to be done.

There is no reason for anyone without an existing copper network to protect, which the NBN as envisaged wasn't as copper was to be withdrawn within 18 months of FTTP deployment, to do anything other than deploy FTTP in most cases.

As it is one botched FTTN rollout and overrunning costs on the HFC upgrades required in the MTM later back to the drawing board to try and salvage the project.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Can't see anything other than G.fast being close to adequate given Virgin's capabilities alongside what we hope will be a considerable FTTP deployment from alternative operators.

I haven't commented on this aspect before, but you are being very confident that VM will be upgrading sufficient hardware to make the shared channel capacity high enough to withstand demand for these "ultrafast" speeds.

Previous empirical results show that can be something of a "hopeful" position. What have you seen to suggest that future performance will not be a repeat of past performance?

If you're right that VM are approaching the upgrade of HFC "right", then I agree that Openreach may well be forced to upgrade their side "right" too.

I note Eircom deploying FTTP en masse despite previously committing themselves to enhanced copper thanks to competition and hope we see the same in the UK.

We need to see that competition ... from someone of the scale of a Vodafone or a Sky. Something that appears to be a real threat.

I wonder if we'll ever see it. IMO, it will only start to happen once BT lose the requirement to provide copper for LLU, which might be one of the negotiated outcomes from either the USO, or the ongoing strategy review.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Once get through some other stuff on to-do list should have a short blog item with the odd photo.

Looking forward to that.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I haven't commented on this aspect before, but you are being very confident that VM will be upgrading sufficient hardware to make the shared channel capacity high enough to withstand demand for these "ultrafast" speeds.

Previous empirical results show that can be something of a "hopeful" position. What have you seen to suggest that future performance will not be a repeat of past performance?

If you're right that VM are approaching the upgrade of HFC "right", then I agree that Openreach may well be forced to upgrade their side "right" too.

This is perhaps a conversation best held in private.

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Apr-16 16:18:31)

can I be shared upon this as well? since I have the same mindset that VM tend to upgrade the access network side more than their side to handle the speeds.

History of Virgin Media speeds seems to be upgrades and a peak, with a tailing off and then next round of upgrades that improve capacity and speed. Pattern has gone on for a few years now.

Modelled speeds i.e. Ofcom tend not to reflect this, helped by only publishing figures once or twice a year.

the ofcom figures get skewed anyway because they over provision speeds. So e.g 120mbit is actually 132mbit.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

the ofcom figures get skewed anyway because they over provision speeds. So e.g 120mbit is actually 132mbit.

Ofcom and the ASA's rules and regulations are bsaed on throughput not sync or provisioned rate. Adding fluff is essential to abide by the rules.

There's no skewing that's unique to Ofcom as all tests measure throughput.

There's 10% on all the tiers on the downstream and 5+% on upstream.

I know hence why they do it

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The UK faced three main calls:

1. We want faster broadband
2. We want it to be available to as many as possible
3. This needs to be done yesterday

There was and still is a vocal lobby element calling for

1. We want Point to Point FTTH for 100% of homes and businesses

Given those requirements any roll-out that was slower than what we have now would just be seeing more criticism. The roll-out is not perfect and will mean more to done in a few years, but a lot of the groundwork for deeper fibre is there now.

Have to agree with you, I've finally been able to order fibre within the last week or so. This will be my first speed increase in something like a decade as I'm on a 20CN exchange. And even with the pace of the rollout in the UK one of the biggest complaints have been about the speed of it, but I suspect that is more down to the fact that a decision was made to go for coverage first rather than speed. So many with the slowest speeds were left towards the end of the various rollouts. If you are an a ADSL2+ 12Mbps connection you might not be inclined to upgrade to fibre if ou are on a 4Mbps ADSLMax/ADSL2+ connection you might be more likely to upgrade.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

This is perhaps a conversation best held in private.

One with sufficient beer that memories are wiped by the next morning

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

One with sufficient beer that memories are wiped by the next morning

If you're in the Leeds area let's make this happen!